


A memory stick full of Myspace friends

by pr_scatterbrain



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Hipsters, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 16:40:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pr_scatterbrain/pseuds/pr_scatterbrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s by the bar Erica happens to catch sight of a guy who looks vaguely familiar. It takes a moment, but it clicks. Eduardo. Mark’s friend. She remembers him because of the suits and the girls. Except he’s not wearing one, nor is a girl tugging him to the men’s bathroom. </p><p>“Hello, Mark’s friend,” she says. </p><p>“Hello, Mark’s ex,” he says in return. </p><p>aka the one where Erica is a lame hipster with no direction and Eduardo is just lame (but a totally lady/gentleman killer on the sly).</p>
            </blockquote>





	A memory stick full of Myspace friends

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this](http://tsn-kinkmeme.livejournal.com/8388.html?thread=16023492#t16023492) prompt: Eduardo grows a revenge backbone and wants to get back at Mark; Erica likes this idea and wishes to subscribe to his newsletter. The obvious solution is a fake relationship that they flaunt all over Facebook with their relationship status and couple-y pictures and lovey-dovey comments on each other's walls. Somewhere between giggling over the outrageous pet names they could call each other and staging half-dressed tropical vacation photoshoots, love happens. AND THEN MARK FINDS OUT.

 

 

 

One day a girl meets a boy.

That is the beginning. Or the one they’re sticking with. (At least until a better one comes along.)

 

 

Erica runs into Eduardo in Brooklyn.

She’s at a gallery opening for her friend Lou. It’s being held above what used to be a great Dutch bakery but is now a ‘female friendly’ sex store and maybe Erica’s already drunk three glasses of free champagne. It’s free because Erica knows the artist and Erica knows the artist because the last time Erica was drunk she met Lou and somehow Lou convinced her to pose nude for a bronze sculpture. Standing in front of her likeness, Erica squints. It doesn’t look much like her at all. All square breasts and squat rectangular limbs, it looks like a copy of every other Cubist work Lou must have seen in her introduction to modern art class.

It’s only when Erica catches a glance at the price sticker, she whistles.

Three thousand dollars.

She doesn’t know whether to feel flattered or insulted. It’s easier to go get a refill.

It’s by the bar she happens to catch sight of a guy who looks vaguely familiar. It takes a moment, but it clicks. Eduardo. Mark’s friend. She remembers him because of the suits and the girls. Except he’s not wearing one, nor is a girl tugging him to the men’s bathroom. Instead he’s exchanged the fortune 500 business professional look for after hour’s smart casual Hugo Boss, and the girl for a dog-eared catalogue.

“Hello, Mark’s friend,” she says.

“Hello, Mark’s ex,” he says in return.

And okay. Ouch. Good one Weather Boy. She didn’t remember him being capable of that. But then again she mostly only remembers how he made three hundred thousand dollars ( _three hundred thousand dollars_ ) during his freshman summer break. During her summer break she hung out with her younger sister Cora and her high school friends at their local community pool in New Jersey. Those fast times were only interrupted by the three days a week she spent working in her local Gap store in the mall just like every other kid her age apart from Eduardo who made three hundred thousand dollars.

She’s almost twenty nine.

Currently she has a grand total of twenty five hundred dollars in her checking account and most of that is from her parents and set aside to help her pay her rent. It is more than a little depressing. But then Klaus, her new friend behind the bar, opens a fresh bottle of champagne just for her. Klaus is a good guy. A really great one, in fact, and after a sip she decides to show Eduardo her sculpture. It feels like the right thing to do. Karma maybe. Despite all his ham-fisted efforts, Mark never saw her naked. So yeah, karma.

 

 

Karma’s always been a bitch though. (It’s strange what lessons take and what ones don’t).

 

 

The next morning she wakes up with someone’s number scrawled all the way down her arm in purple permanent marker.

“It’s kind of second grade,” she tells Eduardo when she calls the number and he answers.

“What kind of second grader were you?” he retorts.

She should be too hung over for that kind of talk. But apparently not.

“A goodtime one,” she tells him, fishing around her nightstand for a cigarette. “What kind were you?”

“I went to boarding school,” he tells her as if that were that.

Good try, but that is most certainly not that – not when he went to ‘boarding school.’

“So you were a super goodtime one?” she asks, because she can and also because her lighter doesn’t seem to be working.

On the other end of the line, he snorts. “The very best.”

She flicks her lighter. Success! It sparks and lights.

Somehow, he overhears. “Are you smoking? You really shouldn’t be smoking.”

God. It really is too early.

Apparently she says that aloud, because he laughs. “It’s quarter part eleven, Albright.”

Fuck him.

“It’s a Saturday. I’m allowed to sleep in.”

“It’s a Tuesday.”

Shit. That would make her two days late to her mom’s Sunday dinner.

But on the bright side, now she didn’t have to go home for four whole days. Also Tuesday was a weekday, but not one of the ones she worked or had tutorials.

(Unfortunately Monday was… she might have to check into that).

Eduardo seemed to be on her wave length. “I’m in the area. Get dressed. I’ll come and take you to lunch.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she says because in her experience it’s the sort of thing that needs to be said right from the start.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” he replies. “I’ll be there in a quarter of an hour.”

Not great, but good enough. Erica allows it and ends the call.

It is only upon pulling herself out of bed, she realises two things. Firstly, she fell asleep without taking off her make-up or her second favourite pair of glittery false eye lashes. Secondly, she fell asleep without getting changed either. The silver lining is the latter discovery, or the more specifically the discovery that she didn’t spill anything on her lucky dress. It also helps that she apparently slept like the dead and thus didn’t wrinkle it too badly with frivolous tossing and turning. That’s why her lucky dress is her lucky dress and when Eduardo turns up she’s still wearing it. (Why mess with a good thing?).

The first thing she tells him is that she’s a grad student. It feels like the thing to say when she catches sight of his watch and the cut of his suit.

For some reasons he eyes her like he does not believe her.

She asks what he is.

It turns out not to be the best question.

 

 

For what it’s worth, she’s always been an honest person. Maybe she’s not a genius or a self proclaimed prophet of the technological age, but she’s always been honest with herself and so deep down, Erica knows that she always knew Mark was a dick. Even at the beginning when he awkwardly sidled up to her and spewed brilliance and insults and brilliant insults at all the other party goers she knew it. But back when she was nineteen it was kind of funny in a dickish and slightly ironic way (not that Mark was being ironic or knew she viewed what he said as anything other than witticisms of the highest order). So in many ways, it wasn’t a surprise she ended up dumping him.

But Eduardo – Eduardo was Mark’s best friend.

She thought that meant something.

 

 

She’s been wrong before.

 

 

As it turns out, the thing about Eduardo is he’s around. NYC’s a pretty big city, but somehow they keep running into each other until eventually they get tired of doing that and just start calling each other up instead. It’s easier. Also, it’s more time efficient. Somehow, over the course of a few weeks, it becomes a habit.

“If you told me you were going to that Asian fusion place on fifth, I would have come too,” she tells him when they meet up for breakfast on Saturday morning.

He rolls his eyes. “You just wanted me to get you a reservation.”

A lie. A blatant lie. She feels hurt.

“I don’t need a reservation,” she tells him, as if ‘reservation’ is a dirty word. (Hint: it is).

“Let me guess, you know the bartender?” he asks rhetorically. “You always know the bartender and that is why you don’t need my help to get a table.”

“I don’t always know the bartender.”

“You do. You knew about Brussels’s new bartender before anyone.”

“That’s because my sister best friend used to date his second cousin.”

Eduardo gives her a look. It isn’t fair of him. It isn’t her fault she knows more people than him. She’s personable, okay. Additionally, she’s social. (A winning combination). As far as she can tell, Eduardo should be thankful. If it weren’t for her he’d hardly do anything but work and send his assistant tie shopping.

That reminds her. “Your assistant wouldn’t put me through to you when I called yesterday.”

“I was at a meeting.”

“A meeting? I told him I was your sister and that it was urgent, Eduardo. What sort of assistant wouldn’t put me through to you?”

“One that recognised your voice?”

“He didn’t recognise my voice,” Erica tells him, because Laurence didn’t. Erica’s Brazilian accent was flawless.

“He did. Around the office he calls you my mildly racist friend.”

Now, that is insulting. “I am not racist.”

Eduardo nods. “I told him that. I said, ‘No, Laurence. Erica is just an actress with a very limited range.’”

Erica isn’t really an actress. She toyed with the idea, but gave it up after one off Broadway show where she danced in the chorus line for three months until the show went bust and the producers disappeared without paying her or anyone else. Currently she’s thinking about teaching. Her mom was a teacher. A good one too. Erica isn’t that great, though. Most of the students she teaches as a TA in the English department kind of just manage to put up with her, sort of like Cora and her friends did when they were that age. For some reason though, Eduardo actually thinks she’d be an excellent teacher.

“People listen to you,” he tells her simply as if it’s some kind of undisputable truth.

But he would say that.

 

 

So yeah, in essence the thing about Eduardo is he’s always around and because she’s always around too, they happen to run into each other more than they don’t run into each other. It doesn’t take them long to transition from that to friendship.

(In her rolodex he’s listed as Eddie “Good Times” Saverino and in his, she’s Erica Alright because he is pedestrian like that whereas she has a creative soul).

Not everything is complicated.

 

 

In the middle of the week, Erica, partly because she can but mostly because she wants to (and okay, also because it’s a weeknight), invites Eduardo out to bar to see this band her friends, friend’s aunt know the drummer from. There might have been a few more degrees of separation added in there because the drummer blinks when Erica and her friends go over to introduce themselves. He’s a nice guy though and when he and his band finally get on stage; they dedicate their first song to them.

Eduardo makes a face after the first few bars. “They’re awful.”

Erica can’t help but give him a look. Because really, wasn’t that the point?

“The lead singer is drunk.”

Erica rolls her eyes. “The lead singer of the band is always drunk, Saverin. It’s only after years and years of hard rock and roll living they find God and/or get married to a Russian supermodel, they get sober. How do you not know this? Shame on you.”

Eduardo rolls his eyes right back at her and steals a sip of her beer. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

The sip turns into a gulp which turns into her half full glass becoming completely empty.

“Hey!”

“I’ll buy you another,” he tells her as if it’s nothing.

“You better,” she retorts, because come on. That’s not soccer.

He snorts but agreeably throws an arm over her shoulder when one of Erica’s friends points her camera at them and snaps a picture.

The next day that picture is up on facebook

 

 

There is a fine line between getting off on Mark Zuckerberg stalking her and him getting off on stalking her. As Erica refreshes her account and catches the shift in her feed reminding her that Mark Zuckerberg has sent her a friend request, she thinks his thing crossed a line a while ago.

But when has her opinion ever meant anything?

 

 

Not surprisingly, all Erica’s friends adore Eduardo. But they would.

Presenting Eduardo to friends/family members/strangers in the subway is kind of like shooting fish in a very small barrel. He just has a way with people. Other than being intelligent, handsome, and cultured, there is just something about in the manner he interacts with people. Despite who he’s introduced too, the timber of his voice always matches the situation he is in. It doesn’t matter what he ends up conversing about; his jokes never fall flat and within minutes, people find themselves speaking freely with him as if he were an old friend rather than a new acquaintance. Without fail, people walk away half in love with him. Basically he’s pretty much like the little black dress of dinner party guests. It’s kind of disgusting.

Completely unsurprisingly, the next morning Erica wakes up to three of her friend’s calling her about him, raving and not so covertly asking his current relationship status (their choice of words, not hers).

“Look it up yourself,” she finds herself grumbling.

It’s only later, she finds herself realising what she said. He is amused when she tells him. Or he could be amused by her standing in his office as Laurence seems to be (she saw the corner of his mouth curl when he buzzed her into Eduardo’s office).

“No, it’s all the America Apparel lycra,” he comments. “You look like a lost ice skater.”

Looking up from his paperwork (wasn’t everything online nowadays?), he smirks. It’s annoying.

“From the 80s,” he adds as if that’s something that needs to be added.

It makes the set of her jaw tighten. “Well, you look like an extra from Greed.”

“The original or the Shia LeBeouf one I know you watched at my place while I was in Geneva?”

“The original. Duh.”

“Then I choose to take your comment as a compliment,” he grins up at her. “The original was epic. The sequel was crap.”

Damn. He’s right.

“I hate it when you go on business trips,” she tells him, sitting down in on the edge of his desk.

“I know,” he replies, handing her some envelopes to either sort or give to Laurence on her way out. “You’ve told me before.”

Though he’s explained exactly what it is he does, the only thing Erica really gets is it involves a great deal of business trips. He was gone an entire week on the last one. House sitting his place was fun. But house sitting an apartment with its own media room, open plan living space and private access to a roof garden was always going to be fun. Except without him, it was too boring for words. It got so bad she ended up going out for drinks with some of the students in one of her tute groups. They were all under twenty one and none of them knew anything about 90s boy bands. It was tragic. She felt so old, especially when they pulled out their fake ids.

But he’s back now and that is good news.

She still feels guilty though. “So you don’t mind?”

He sighs and for a moment he looks very worn. She wonders how often he has been asked variations of that question. Too many, perhaps. It’s a stupid question. He minds. Of course he does. It’s obvious. He manages a smile like it isn’t though and asks her if that was why she hasn’t friend’d him on facebook.

“You can, you know. I still use it.”

She really doesn’t understand that. “Eduardo–”

He eyes her archly. “Most of your friend’s friend’d me months ago.”

Our friend’s, she wants to correct. They aren’t just hers anymore. They stopped being just hers the moment they met him. But none of them were there in the beginning. None of them knew Eduardo when he was eighteen and so young and in love with Mark and all his so stupidly smart ideas. Maybe one or two might have goggled him, but none of them really knew what happened. She wants to say that, all of that, but does not know how.

“It’s okay,” he tells her instead. “It is. I promise.”

She is pretty sure he’s lying, but she knows those sorts of lies so she pulls out her phone and opens her browser.

“There,” he says after she sends a friend request and he accepts it. “Now you can annoy me online as well as in person.”

(She prefers in person. It’s not because she’s old fashioned).

Putting her phone away, she changes subjects. “So hey, Bastille day is this Friday.”

“Yes,” he nods, eying her suspiciously.

“My friend’s throwing a party.”

“One of your friends is always throwing a party.”

That’s true, but only because Erica’s friends are uniformly pretty awesome. It’s not the point though.

“You want to go as characters from a Jean-Luc Goddard film?”

He puts down his pen. “No. Not really.”

To Erica’s ears it doesn’t sound like a very firm ‘no’ so she chooses to ignore it and turn up to his apartment on Friday with her hair set, false glittery eye lashes stuck on and wearing a mustard coloured shift dress from the 70s that she bought on ebay for ten dollars (shipping cost twice that much, but like that counted). He groans when he opens his door and sees her. But he lets her take him out.

That’s the thing about Eduardo.

He might act like a stick in the mud, but if she worked on even a little bit he was up for almost anything, even dressing like Guy, the tragic protagonist from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. It isn’t Bande à part, but no one really cares. Half of the people there seem to have just found berets and called it a day. As a result, Eduardo being Eduardo (dressed as a 60s mechanic), is everyone’s clear favourite.

The next day, he and his best dressed sash features in every second photograph her up-load onto facebook.

Even though they talked about it, it still makes Erica feel awkward.

He rolls his eyes at her, but a few days later, hung over and curled up pitifully on her couch after a long night which started at the roller derby and finished at the annual Ernest Hemmingway Look-a-Like contest, he bluntly tells her it doesn’t matter.

“Mark doesn’t give a shit, and even if he does look at those photographs all he’ll see is me having a good time.”

Sitting cross legged on the floor, she hands him an aspirin and a glass of water. “Did you have a good time?”

It’s not really want she wanted to ask, not even close. It’s important though. But it’s not what she wanted to ask.

He cracks open his eyes. “Yeah. But I feel like shit now.”

“Me too,” she replies.

“Liar,” he tells her.

She doesn’t care.

It takes him a few hours, but by late afternoon he’s well enough to borrow a pair of her sunglasses and venture outside with her for a late breakfast. Over pancakes and Bloody Mary’s, they nurse what’s left of their hangovers and try to fill their stomach with something that is half way good for them.

He puts down his knife and fork and pushes his sunglasses into his hair when she brings the subject up again. It’s the wrong place for this conversation and it’s probably the wrong time too. Only, out of everybody in the world, he knows what it’s like to have had Mark enter and exit his life. He might not know what it’s like to have Mark try and try and not give up on trying to re-enter his life again like she does, but he understands more than her old BU friends do.

“Erica,” he says, quiet and she should stop.

She should stop and go flirt with the waiter or tell him about this fair trade market this guy she knows is thinking about starting. She should. She knows she should. But both of their pasts have been rewritten because the internet is written in ink. Ink, not pencil. Mark made Eduardo into a footnote and her into a bitch or, alternatively, the one that got away. (She doesn’t know which is worse). That’s what he did. She should stop, but she can’t, because that is what Mark did to them.

“Mark only sees the outside,” Eduardo tells her. “That’s all.”

And he right.

Maybe Mark does only see the outside.

But he still sends her friend requests. In the beginning she used to ignore them; click ‘not now’ or whatever Mark decided to call the rejection button. Now she lets his request sit in her notification box. It doesn’t matter. If she does anything, he just sends her another one. Not that that matters either. He created facebook.

Maybe Erica isn’t a genius or a billionaire. She isn’t naïve though. She never was.

There is nothing Mark doesn’t see.

Sure, Facebook – public or private or whatever one wanted to call it – might just capture the outside.

But Erica thinks the outside is more than Mark should see.

 

 

(It’s been years and even though she shouldn’t, she still remembers the way he could make her feel when she let him).

 

 

They’re still a little worse for wear in the evening when they go to one of her department admin peoples’ house warming. It’s in Queens and the weather is improbably good, and without even trying Erica manages to get Eduardo drunk on out of date eggnog that someone had decided to serve for some reason Erica didn’t really understand and maybe that’s why she brings it up.

“If Mark only sees the outside, we should make the outside a lie.”

It feels like an epiphany said out aloud.

Eduardo rolls his eyes. “Have you been talking to Jacques from the philosophy department again? I thought he had a boyfriend.”

Jacques does have a boyfriend and Erica had been talking to him a few minutes ago, but that isn’t the point at all.

“Facebook is a construct. It is the thingo valley of social interaction.”

Eduardo gives her a look. “The uncanny valley?”

“Yes, that.”

He looks unimpressed.

She concludes that he must have not caught onto her idea. She repeats herself.

“I heard you the first time,” he tells her.

In the background, Erica hears someone bring out a ukulele. It’s really too early in the evening for that, but who is she to judge? Poking Eduardo with the umbrella from her drink, she makes him make space for her on the deck chair he is cruelly bogarting from her. She’s the one wearing platform heels. She deserves first dibs to any and all deck chairs. Behind her she hears someone laugh and the flash of a smart phone.

He sighs. “Photo’s like that are the reason my mother thinks you’re my girlfriend.”

“You wish I was your girlfriend,” she replies archly.

She’s seen the people he dates. The majority of them had intimidated the hell out of her; all manicured nails, polished wingtips and driving ambition. They last (or he does), for a few weeks at the least, and a few months at the most. During which they mostly ignore him. She doesn’t get the attraction but for the last whatever she’s been rocking the single life so each to their own.

Tipsy, Eduardo giggles. “Mark would be so fucking fucked off if you were my girlfriend.”

And –

Oh –

“He would, wouldn’t he?” she says, because Mark would be.

Eduardo meets her gaze, the curl of his mouth crocked and amused. “He totally would.”

 

 

And right then and there, it all starts.

 

 

Okay, maybe it really starts on the subway back into the city (Eduardo’s place has a roof garden, okay, the after-party has to be there), when Eduardo and Erica borrows their new friend Carly’s iPhone and updates their relationship status from ‘single,’ to ‘it’s complicated,’ and finally to ‘in a relationship.’

“You dog days are over, my amigo,” she tells Eduardo when they’re finished; pressing a fuchsia coloured kiss to the corner of his mouth and snapping a new profile pic while she’s at it.

“What the fuck?” he says. “If anything it’s your dog days that are over now we’re facebook official.”

“Fuck you,” she tells her, handing Carly back her iPhone. “Now you’re my facebook boyfriend you have to be nice to me. That means no more corporate high flyers or business tycoons, Doll face.”

Eduardo rolls his eyes. “And that means no busboys, struggling musicians, tenure professors or freshman students for you.”

“You are a horrible facebook boyfriend,” she tells him.

“Too bad, I’m the only one you’ve got.”

She makes a face. “Yeah, too bad.”

A few of their rude eavesdropping friends who obviously don’t want any of Erica’s amazing cocktails, snigger at them. It’s very bad taste. She tells them so and also tells them they are officially cut off from her awesome mint juleps and happy fun time juice. Because her bartender skills are that good, they look disappointed.

It serves them right.

Or it would, but halfway to Eduardo’s place, everyone seems to forget. Except Eduardo makes a face when he catches her flirting with Kyle, the sound tech from the bar no one but Eduardo likes downtown.

“We’re only facebook official, you cockblock.” she reminds him.

But Eduardo doesn’t care. Slinging an arm over her shoulder he rolls his eyes and tells her to suck it up buttercup. (He actually says the ‘buttercup’ bit). It’s very annoying. Of course their friends find it hilarious. But they would. They’re the same people who make a living writing academic papers on the role of the woman in Moby Dick.

“You’re facebook boyfriend is hot,” Jacques says, snapping a pic.

Eduardo is. Erica can’t argue about that. He’s Brazilian and looks like a full time model and has the brain of an astronaut from the 1960s.

Jacques nods. (By her side, Eduardo is shaking with laughter).

And okay, Erica apparently said all of that aloud.

“I am a very lucky girl,” Erica concludes, because as the saying goes, in for a penny, in for a pound.

However she doesn’t feel that lucky late the next morning when she wakes up still in Eduardo’s roof garden. With bits of shrubbery in her hair and her nail polish badly chipped, she goes down to his apartment and bangs on the door until someone answers it. That someone turns out to be Jacques. He looks even worse than her.

“I hope you didn’t spend the night fooling around with my facebook boyfriend while I was inebriated,” she tells him, wagging her finger.

He laughs – then winces almost immediately at the noise.

Leaving him by the door with his sleeping boyfriend, Erica makes for Eduardo’s room. Stepping over more than a few of her colleges, she kicks off her heels and leaves them in her wake. The king sized bed is calling her. She can hear it, that lusty siren and its lusty siren calling sheets; each of the hundred thread count singing to her. Eduardo barely moves when she crawls into bed beside him.

Vaguely she hears him mutter something but it’s too early to care.

Patting his hand, she tells him to go back to sleep.

It’s good advice. She takes it herself.

Only when she wakes up she discovers that her sister has called and left a message.

It blinks at Erica and once open it mostly consists of question marks and exclamation points.

Not a good sign. Not a good sign at all.

Hauling herself out of Eduardo’s bed, Erica moves herself into Eduardo’s bathroom and washes her face with cold water and some of Eduardo’s fancy pants soap. It’s not great but it more or less does the trick. With clumsy fingertips she wipes away trials of mascara and eyeliner and, a little bit more awake, calls her sister back.

Cora of course, is obnoxiously perky and cheerful when she answers.

Erica cuts her off before she can even get started. “Don’t get your panties in a twist. It’s just a facebook romance.”

Cora sighs. “You two are so lame.”

“We are not,” Erica retorts because they totally aren’t. “We’re making a statement.”

“You’re statements suck. Like that time you did that semester in Paris and refused to speak a word of English to any of us.”

“I was attempting to appreciate the culture!”

“You were being a pretentious loser and made mom worry,” Cora retorts.

Little sisters are annoying.

On the other end of the line, Cora sighs again. “So you aren’t dating Eduardo for real?”

“Nope.”

“You are so lame.”

 

 

The following morning, just after Erica has somehow managed to finish her Modernity tute Laurence calls to tell her Eduardo was unexpectedly called into a conference call and thus would not be able to make their lunch date (apparently they don’t have lunch anymore, they have lunch dates – it’s awesome). He sounds rather indignant about having to call her.

“Oh my,” Erica says (perhaps in an accent). “What a downer.”

“Yes,” Laurence replies. “Quite.”

In the afternoon, Erica drops by Eduardo’s office just because she can.

“I like being your girlfriend. The perks are awesome.”

Without looking up from his work, Eduardo tells her she can’t steal office supplies from his work and that she’ll have to give back the pens.

“Laurence saw you take them.”

“Laurence is your assistant. I’m your girlfriend. I can have all the pens I want.”

“You’re my facebook girlfriend. You don’t get pens. Only a real girlfriend gets to pilfer biros from my work.”

She scowls. (Eduardo doesn’t even bother to glance at her).

 

 

So yeah, fake dating. It’s kind of awesome. Erica isn’t sure why she hadn’t tried it before. It’s too easy. Mostly they hang out and do the same sort of stuff they did before, only they get their friends to take a lot of photographs and with what free time Erica has between her part time jobs, and university demands, she takes to spending it annoying Eduardo online, naming animals after him on farmsville and Eduardo does the same (minus the farmsville part since apparently he helped create it or something). When they do meet up, he bitches her out for the stupid nicknames and it’s sort of just like normal except for how her friends have stopped trying to set her up and how Eduardo’s high powered business shaped friends have stopped talking about the high powered business shaped people Eduardo scores on a regular bases.

“Pumpkin cake?

“Don’t hate, you love it,” she tells him because he totally does. “Besides, I googled popozuda and I am not a fan.”

“At least it’s not Pumpkin cake.”

Erica gives him a look. “Your pet name for me is big ass.”

“I meant it as a compliment.”

She narrows her eyes. “For the record, I don’t take it as one.”

“Then you’re narrow minded,” he replies flippantly.

 

 

The thing about facebook is how easy it is to make you’re life look better than it is.

“I’m not going out with you and your tute group,” Eduardo says right off the bat.

Erica makes a face. “Why not?”

Eduardo gives her a look. “They’re teenagers.”

“They’re young and beautiful and all of them promised to write awesome stuff about how awesome and in love we are.”

“They’re teenagers,” Eduardo repeats. “I am not going to a Go Team! gig with a group of people that still need to bribe intermediaries to buy them beer.”

“Don’t be a stick in the mud,” Erica tells him, throwing her hands in the air. “It’ll look great on facebook.”

“No.”

She’s heard him say that before.

 

 

For the record, the photos totally do look great on facebook.

(“I hate you.”

“No you don’t. You adore me. I’m the light of your life, the best part of your day and the icing on your metaphorical cake. You said so on my wall.”).

 

 

In the middle of winter, Erica comes down hard with the flu. It’s not really a surprise. It had been going around. Most of the students and staff in her department seem to have gotten it or are on the verge of coming down with it. It takes her out pretty hard though, and she ends up spending the weekend in bed.

As Eduardo is real life awesome as well as facebook awesome, he comes over with vegetable soup.

“Did you make that?” she asks, because Eduardo it totally the type of guy to make soup from scratch to impress someone.

He snorts. “Fuck no. I bought it from that deli near my place.”

“You are shattering all my illusions about you,” she tells him because he totally is. “If you were really dating me, would you make me soup from scratch?”

Sitting down on her bed and helping himself to some of her crackers, Eduardo shakes his head. “Naw. But I’d probably lie and tell you it was my grandmother’s recipe.”

“Smooth,” she tells him.

“Yeah. I know. It’s a real panty dropper.”

He says it so flippantly it makes her laugh so hard she ends up snorting soup out of her nose.

Handing her a serviette, he grins. “You’re a class act Albright.”

He ends up staying over for most of the night. Together they veg out on her couch and watch old films and infomercials. It’s something they've never really done before, mostly because they always seem to be out. It’s nice. So nice, Erica wonders why they don’t do it more often. As much as she loves going out (NYC is NYC after all), there is something so pleasant about staying in and having Eduardo’s stupid jokes all to herself.

The only downside is it kind of makes her feel his absence all the more when he leaves for a business trip a week and a half later.

“It’s only for a fortnight,” he tells her, as she watches him pack.

“A ‘fortnight’? You and your Harvard words,” she sasses, fiddling with a pair of his business socks (black, fine virgin wool, calf length; the most proper of professional socks).

“I’ll be back before you know it.”

He isn’t even gone and she doesn’t know what to do with herself.

“Hey, it’ll give you a chance to write ‘I miss you,’ messages on my wall and quote angsty lyrics in your daily status update.”

That kind of is a silver lining.

He grins, taking the pair of his socks from her. “Plus we can skype each other.”

She grins. “We can skype sex each other.”

He throws the pair of socks at her.

 

 

Eduardo ends up extending his trip.

It sucks.

She winds up going paint balling with her tute group.

It’s a new low.

 

 

When Eduardo comes back he is tired and has dark purple circles under his eyes.

“You need a holiday,” she tells him, because he really looks like he does.

He laughs. “I just spent three weeks in California.”

“Well,” Erica revises. “Maybe a holistay instead.”

“A staycation?” he asks, cracking one eye open.

“Yeah, why not?”

“You’re such a dork, Alright,” he concludes, but he lets her dress them up in fake vacation outfits (she would not have picked him as someone who would own a straw sombrero and colourful Hawaii shirt, but surprises are what makes life worth living). He even lets her steal flowers from the lobby and make them both lei’s. It’s lame and stupid and he’s laughing in the picture she snaps. When they’re done, they camp out in his apartment, make smores on his thousand dollar oven and eat them in bed with ice cream while watching a 30 Rock marathon.

“You guys are so embarrassing,” Cora comments on Monday morning. “My news feed was full of your lovey-dovey vomit all weekend. It totally impeded me facebook stalking my ex’s.”

“Jealous?” Erica grins.

Cora wrinkles her nose. “You’re lucky our parents aren’t on facebook.”

Erica has seen some of Cora’s photo albums and personally, Erica thinks Cora is the lucky one. But whatever. Whose counting anyway?

 

 

Okay, Mark is.

But he always was.

That was the thing about him.

 

 

Three weeks is a long trip. A week is usually the longest period of time Eduardo spends away and normally when he comes back to New York City it’s with a bag full of duty free stuff rather than slumped shoulders and dark bags under his eyes. It takes a while, but eventually Eduardo spills the beans. Apparently while in California, Eduardo attended some business charity gala thing and while there he was unfortunate enough to get cornered and royally chewed out by Dustin re: dating Mark’s ex/soul mate.

“Bro’s before ho’s?” Erica guesses.

Eduardo nods. “Pretty much.”

Erica doesn’t really know what to think about that. Not given everything.

“It means it’s working,” Eduardo says, like that’s something to say.

Erica doesn’t think Dustin tearing Eduardo a new one for dating her counts as a good thing. (That was never the aim of this whole thing). Maybe she doesn’t know the specifics, but she thought they had more or less remained friends. Or friendly. But friends don’t do that. They don’t.

She tries to say something. That. Maybe. But it comes out wrong.

“Why does it matter so much to you?” Eduardo asks her.

She wants to ask, why doesn’t it matter to Eduardo? Why is he so cool about everything?

He makes a face at her. “Don’t be so plebeian Albright.”

“Don’t throw five dollar words at me,” she replies even though she’s an English post-grad candidate.

“Of course it matters,” he tells her, spitting the words at her like pulled teeth.

And –

Of course it does.

She always knew it did. She just made him say it aloud.

(She feels like the bitch Mark said she was).

 

 

She wants to apologise the next time she sees Eduardo, but doesn’t know how.

 

 

The part everyone forgets is she’s not nineteen anymore and even when she was, Mark didn’t know her. Not really. He doesn't know her now either. He might see everything on her facebook account, but that isn’t her. It isn’t even half of her. It isn’t even a quarter.

The person she is doesn’t even rate a mention in all the folk law and mythmaking that has occurred in the years since she broke up with him. Instead somehow enough time has passed for her to stop being the bitch ex and instead become the one that got away and honestly, there is nothing she wants to be less than that. If anything, Eduardo should be the one that got away. He was the only person who ever mattered to Mark, the only one who ever truly understood him. All she ever was, was some girl stupid enough to date him and smart enough to call him on his B.S. before she got too involved.

“You can’t control these things,” Eduardo says quietly.

“I don’t want to be that girl,”

He smiles gently at her. “It’s not up to you.”

And, no. It’s not. Just like it wasn’t up to her when Mark posted his diatribe about her, her bra size, her sexual habits and her family history online. It’s about her though. But somehow not; not the her who calls out students when they try and give her lame excuses for not doing the reading, the ones who charges crappy films on Eduardo’s cable bill, and still doesn’t know what to do with her life. Just the her Mark remembered. Or wanted to remember. (Or just plain wanted).

“Sometimes we don’t get to pick our roles, we just have to play them,” he tells her, and he would know.

 

 

Eduardo’s played every role. Every one of them, up to and including her boyfriend.

 

 

There are many things Erica isn’t.

But she is honest.

She doesn’t want a facebook boyfriend. She just wants Eduardo.

She probably always did, right from the very start when he looked at Lou’s clay portrait and commented on Erica’s geometric tits in that indifferent trust-me-I’m-a-professional-professional tone of voice of his and made her laugh.

There is nothing ironic about what she feels for Eduardo. She’s never been that good an actor. Never been good at anything really, despite what Eduardo may believe. (And he’s always believed in her despite the fact she’s had around a dozen part time jobs in the time they’ve been friends and still hasn’t figured out what she wants to do with her life).

So yes, Erica has always been honest with herself.

She wants to always be brave too.

But honesty is one thing, bravery is another.

There are many things easier than being brave. Not breathing a word is one option. A charade is a charade after all. She might not be a very good actress, but she more or less knows how to let an act carry on. They could keep posting stupid photographs and calling each other equally stupid names. They’ve done it for months. It would be easy to continue.

But friending Mark back and letting his fairy tale reunion take place would be even easier.

One click and she would be set. One click and she wouldn’t have to worry about the future because she’d have Mark’s. A single click of the mouse she – Mark – would have the happy ending everyone but her wanted. Simple. One click and it would be done. Easy as that.

Erica’s never wanted simple though.

Eduardo isn’t simple.

He is good and kind, but he isn’t simple.

 

 

The truth is Mark doesn’t matter. Not to Erica anyway. But Eduardo does. So very much.

 

 

“Why didn’t you friend me first?” Erica finds herself asking the following night on the cab ride to Cora’s birthday party drinks.

It’s dark and cold in the taxi. The heat is on but she doesn’t feel it. Not even a little. All she can feel is Eduardo’s arm around her shoulders and the fine wool of his jacket against her cheek. She is so in love she cannot see straight. Now she has stopped pretending, that is all she can feel. She is so in love she cannot see anything but him.

He is watching the lights of the city as they drive from her end of town down to Cora’s party.

At her question he turns and looks down at her. “I don’t know. Maybe I wanted you to decide for yourself.”

She bites her lip.

 

 

(The remainder of the cab ride passes in silence).

 

 

When they arrive, Cora is delighted to see them. With streamers in her hair and dressed in Erica’s lucky dress, she throws her arms around them and hugs them hello. Most of the attendees are mutual friends or friends of friends. There is a feeling of warmth to the table and something inside Erica’s heart breaks a little because she wants Eduardo to always have this. There is nothing else she wants more than for him to always be surrounded by people who make him laugh and who will care about his day and remember to tease him about coming second last in an Ernest Hemmingway Look-A-Like competition (Erica came last).

For so long he didn’t have this.

He never speaks of it, but she can tell. The years he spent in Singapore were just that. Years spent in a foreign country where he worked and travelled and sent his assistants out to buy fancy ties. She didn’t have similar years. Hers were different. She always had friends but now she has Eduardo and somehow her life is just better with him in it.

At the head of the table, Cora teases Eduardo about something stupid.

Erica looks at him.

There is colour in Eduardo’s cheeks from the wine and he ducks his head when Cora presses a glittery lipstick kiss to his cheek.

It scares Erica a little, but she can be brave. If she can be honest, she can be brave.

She can tell him the truth. She can do that. She will not make him choose though. He will always have this table of friends no matter if she is or isn’t his real girlfriend. They are his friends too, not hers. And so, after dinner, when they go back to the café near his place for a late night coffee she tells him.

“I want to be your real girlfriend,” she tells him. It isn’t great or poetically stated, but it’s what she wants.

He is her best friend. Everything is better when he is around. Everything matters more when he is there. She doesn’t want walls posts or status updates or to play stupid childish games anymore. It’s been years since she allowed herself to want more, but she does, so very much. The realisation feels overdue.

Eduardo looks taken back. “Erica…”

He opens his mouth and closes it. Words seem to fail him.

She makes herself smile. She makes herself be brave, for just a little bit longer.

“It’s okay,” she says.

Maybe it isn’t. But she told him. There is nothing else she can do.

 

 

He – he is – he asks for time.

She gives it to him.

 

 

There is a certain sharpness to him, a hardness; something that Erica sees less now, but remembers clearly. Sometimes it’s still there; a bite to his words, an edge in the expression in his eyes and a hesitance to his manner – a need to prove himself. Erica knows this because Mark did the same thing to her. That’s why she thinks, maybe, just maybe at the end of the day it isn’t about facebook shares or money or recognition. Maybe it’s about what one person can do to another.

At one point Mark cared for them.

At one point, perhaps Mark even loved them.

At one point or another, he must have.

Otherwise why would he have bothered to hurt them?

 

 

Erica can give Eduardo time, but her life continues. She works and she sees her friends and annoys her sisters and nothing stops or grinds to a halt. Life doesn’t work that way. Eduardo is still there, their friends connect them and maybe her heart aches, but if it didn’t she’d worry.

Then one day she comes home from Cora’s to find him waiting for her.

“You brought me soup,” Erica says, when she sees the container sitting on her counter.

Eduardo grins, “I made it myself.”

Something stupid flutters in her chest.

“A family recipe?”

“Why yes,” Eduardo replies, smiling crookedly. “My Grandmothers in fact.”

“Wow.”

 

 

As it turns out, karma’s only a bitch if you are.

(And Erica isn’t one).

 

 

 


End file.
